The world beyond
by Daemon Sadi
Summary: DON'T OWN ANYTHING! Thought this up as a way to create a somewhat plausible Naruto x-over.. whatever ;P thought of making this a Naruto/pokegirls or perhaps Naruto/HP.. hm.. one piece?.. cross, though i'm not much of an author.. anyway: enjoy! :D
1. The Barrier

"Ne, Ero-sennin. Why are you in such a hurry to get to that funny looking discolouration in the sky?", Naruto asked his teacher as they rushed through a sparse forest near Kumogakure. The older man had woken him and as soon as they had sealed up all their belongings, they had set off at an insanely fast run towards.. wherever it was that they were headed.

Jiraiya glanced sidelong at him, "You have no idea, do you? You don't know what that 'funny looking discolouration' is, eh? ... Let me tell you a story, Naruto..

* * *

Once upon a time, when humankind was still very young, there was harmony.

The vast majority of humans led normal lives ruled by hard work and love. Some, however, thought themselves to be tasked with a different, more difficult duty: to help and protect this first group. The reason for this thought was a special power they wielded; a power called magic.

The perils in that age were plentiful; demons – fiendish animals of mysterious powers – among the most common.

For their efforts the "magicians" were regarded with the utmost respect. In fact, they were so well respected, that whenever one of them entered a settlement, they could always count on a warm welcome; complete with a filling meal and shelter even from the worst of weathers – a luxury at that time.

Over time said respect grew so far that some of the "mundanes" tried to imitate the use of magic and the magicians – feeling flattered – helped them. Decades of trial and error later, some interesting discoveries had been made:

1. Every human had a limited amount of two different kind of energies: magic or the mental & spiritual energy and "Ki" – the life force, the energy of the body.

2. If a human used all his Ki, he would die – painfully so.

3. If a human used all his magic, he would collapse from mental exhaustion and might slip into a coma, depending on the severity of the exhaustion and several other factors.

4. It was possible to train and increase one's energies, however the speed in which they increased depended on the starting amount. For example: if a mundane who is gifted with a large amount of Ki and only a minimal amount of magic were to try and improve his energies, he would be much more successful if he concentrated on his Ki, while the same effort on his magic would only increase them marginally.

5. It was possible to mix the two energies to make something completely new: chakra.

This fifth discovery changed many things, most of all the "balance of things".

The first ones who were able to successfully wield chakra were gifted by the magicians with special presents that would become heritable, gifts that would much later become known as bloodline limits.

As time passed, however, the magicians feared that they might have made a big mistake. Where before they were special due to their powers and lived relatively comfortable lives, being respected just for being magicians, they now found themselves to be somewhat less welcome.

Not that they were treated with hostility, but rather, they had to work for their comforts. The respect magicians had earned themselves over generations, was slowly lost, as the dangers of old had slowly been exterminated and those that were still around could be handled by the much more plentiful "chakra-wielders".

While chakra and Ki weren't as potent as magic, being far less flexible and only of real use in times of combat or hard physical labour, much more people could use them..

So, slowly, but surely, magicians became resentful of those who "robbed them of their comforts": Mundanes who had no wish to learn how to wield their energies and used their time to come up with new inventions instead, were looked down upon by the magicians for being useless and lazy.

The others – the Ki-wielders (who were even fewer in numbers than magicians as their art was very dangerous for oneself) and the chakra-wielders – were seen as freaks of nature, abominations that should be done away with.

Because of this resentment and their fear of becoming obsolete in this new age, the magicians waged war on those two groups.

At first they struck when they were unobserved, using the flexibility of their gift to cover their tracks. It was quite common to hear of chakra-wielders being attacked by wild animals, families of Ki-wielders falling victims to fires, diseases killing them by the dozens, and the list goes on..

These occurrences, however, caused both chakra-wielders and the now severely decimated Ki-wielders to become suspicious and as such they decided to group together, away from the mundanes who had no further need for them anyway, their inventions now more than enough to allow them to lead comfortable lives.

Seeing that their cover was more or less blown, the magicians struck one last time as the two groups were on the move. It was a bloody battle. The losses on both sides were greater than anyone could have foreseen, as they had never truly tested their powers against each other beforehand..

In the end it was a stalemate: while the magicians were stronger and had much more experience using their art, they were too few to overcome the sheer numbers of their enemies. They succeeded partially though – there were able to kill all Ki-wielders in this final battle.

As they retreated, leaving this new land of the chakra-wielders, they came up with a plan to ensure that they would never have to face those "freaks" again – they erected an impenetrable shield around this "continent of the chakra-wielders", but not before using up most of their magic to summon the last ten demons left in their lands and binding them to their will.

The ten last demons were to ensure that never again these chakra-wielders shall be a danger for them. Nine of the beasts were unleashed onto the continent before the shield was erected, tasked to attack should the enemy's population ever increase too far. The tenth, the strongest of its kind, was to guard the shield and to attack any that tried to escape should they ever breach this barrier – though seeing as they did everything in their might to ensure that it was impenetrable, they were sure that this wasn't truly needed; it made for better sleep, however.

And so it came that the magicians returned to their lands, having bested their mortal enemy – their own creations as it were. Upon their return they destroyed everything that was left of the freaks, instructions on how to use the energies being the firsts to be lost. As for the mundanes, they quickly lost all their memories of spiritual and body energy, chakra- and Ki-wielders..

In the following years the chakra-wielders, due to their increasing sense of community, came up with a new name for themselves; they were henceforth called "shinobi".

* * *

"As the memories of their mortal enemy waned, so, too, did the sense of community.. and now we fight each other over the 3,900,000 square kilometres we call our home – the shinobi continent.

We are lucky to know as much about the old times as we do. The clans with bloodline limits have luckily been in the habit of recording their history, even if some parts were incomplete. Due to the number of such clans in Konoha and from what we were able to spy from the other countries, we were able to pierce this whole history together."

All this was told in a somewhat absentminded manner, as they hurried along towards what Naruto now correctly assumed was an attack upon the barrier of their mortal enemy.

"But.. but who would attack the barrier? And why?" Naruto asked, nearly stumbling from those revelations.

"Why indeed.. as for who? I think you know the answer, Naruto. Let me ask this: who has the power to assume that they might have a chance to succeed in bringing it down, when some of the strongest of our kind have unsuccessfully tried the same throughout the decades?"

There was a short silence, before it dawned on Naruto and he _did _stumble. As he straightened himself up, Naruto whispered wide-eyed, "Akatsuki.."


	2. A common enemy

As they reached the northmost point of the land of lightning, they came to a halt.

"Let's set up camp here, brat. They should be about another 5 miles north, on a small island. It is one of the only pieces of land the barrier crosses," the old man speculated.

And indeed, in the distance you could see an area where the curious blue light was at its most noticeable. You could see the blue light slowly spreading from that point, becomming lighter and lighter the further it spread.

"Shouldn't we keep going? We could be there in about another 7 minutes and take a soldier pill before engaging them. They should be quite exhausted themselves by now, shouldn't they? It is after all the.. what? Twentieth hour of their assault?" Naruto was itchy to rush in; he wanted to protect everyone of the devastion that would hit them if indeed there was a demon out there, stronger than even the Kyuubi, just waiting for its chance to destroy them all.

"Rest for now. In another three hours or so the reinforcements i asked Tsunade-hime for via summon should arrive; troops from Suna and Iwa should be here by then, too, I'd estimate.

Kumo will already have had the area scouted, so we can count on some of their shinobi, as well as some information. Trust me, brat; there are two things every nation has a vested interest in, a) how other nations deal with the demon attacks and b) the continued existance of the barrier. They shall be here."

So they settled down, taking the time to eat some and meditate. The latter point had been one of the hardest disciplines to become aquainted with to Naruto; it was also one of the first things he had been tought in order to 'find his center', i.e. calm down some.

* * *

As the war-hardened shinobi had predicted, not three hours later, their reinforcements arrived which included quite a few ANBU, the rest of the Rookie 12 and their former teachers.

"As many as possible without weakening the village protection," one ANBU quoted the Godaime Hokage. Likewise, shinobi from the other great nations appeared – each force about as strong as their own –, settling down within sight.

One shinobi from Kumo approached each group, telling them how many enemies they should expect and the enemies' names and appearance. They didn't actually discuss strategies as time was quickly running out if the blue colour that now spread as far as the eye could see, was any indication. They would have to attack head-on.

They didn't actually have superior numbers, as it seemed as though Akatsuki had anticipated interferance and had quite a few low-ranked missing-nins watching their seemed, in fact, as though just about _every_ missing nin was there – though some to be somewhat absent-minded, their eyes glazed over. Luckily, most of those missing-nins wouldn't a match even for the weakest of the as of yet resting forces.

Within half an hour of the last expected troop's arrival – which was about 5 hours after Naruto and Jiraiya's arrival – they set out, intending to stop their enemy.

* * *

Even though they slaughtered the missing-nins as fast as they could and managed to get just about all of the Akatsuki members involved with the fight, the enemy took every opportunity they got to attack the barrier in-between or even during fights.

Against those odds, they didn't make it and the barrier crumled, causing the fight to cease for a moment.

The resulting silence was broken by Naruto's shout, "WHY? Why the fuck did you do that? Do you know what dangers you might have just unleashed? WHY?"

One of the last three surviving persons who called themselves "Pain" answered monotoniously, "Everyone has their own agenda. Some of us want to test themselves against the magicians of old, some just wish to experiance something new and some do it just because they can. Regardless of their motivations though, it was the final part of my plan," here his voice became passionate, "my plan to bring about true peace. Now that we have the same enemy, now that we as a 'race' if you will face the same threat, we will unite. In fact.. just look about you. Here are forces of Iwa, Konoha, Kumo and Suna, of their smaller allies and even a few Oto shinobi fighting side by side.. Now, we as the shinobi race can truly.."

He was interrupted by an allmighty screach that caused everyone to wince. Suddenly the already rather toubled water became even more of a hazard to the few shinobi who still stood upon the water; and it kept getting worse.

As one everyone turned to the new threat – which just had to be the Juubi, the demon stronger even than Kyuubi.


End file.
